As Brett grew from freelancer to CEO, his relationship to fear scaled with his responsibilities: “My job is to keep it all together. My job is to make sure that nobody else is afraid. So everybody just believes that everything is going according to plan.” This didn’t work. It blew up repeatedly.
When team members brought fears and concerns to the surface, Brett would dismiss them as potentially damaging morale or distracting from goals. But those concerns were nearly always valid — and even when the specifics weren’t, the feeling behind them was. Ignoring those signals led to team members feeling disconnected, projects going off track, and fears being realized.
The transformation came through transparent vulnerability. When the major client reduced their contract, Brett’s old approach would have been: “Okay so this happened but don’t worry we got this.” His new approach: “This has happened. This is good for a lot of reasons. It’s also scary. There’s uncertainty. Let’s step into it.” The result was team excitement and cohesion rather than anxiety.
“There’s just a much deeper sense of trust. Clients and I feel much more comfortable that neither of us are going to move forward into something that really doesn’t work for us. And there’s also trust that if anything changes course, we will be able to have the conversations to correct course and flow with reality.”
Before feeling his fear: over-promise, under-deliver, speak only to positives. After: deeper trust, earlier difficult conversations, and the ability to flow with reality as it unfolds.
Related Concepts
- Vulnerability transforms business performance
- Chameleon leadership creates uncertainty
- Organizations must remove fear to innovate
- Pre-grieving potential loss creates resilience and the courage to draw boundaries